Pierre-Auguste Renoir | L'ombrelle, 1878

In this radiant painting, Pierre-Auguste Renoir depicts the quintessential Impressionist subject of the fashionably attired Parisienne within a scene of abundantly flowering nature.

Painted in 1878 at the height of Impressionism, the variegated brushwork consisting of thick and swirling impasto and small dabs of spontaneous and audaciously applied paint, make L'ombrelle one of the artist's most experimental works of the latter part of that decade.

Marie Bashkirtseff | A meeting, 1884

When A Meeting was exhibited at the 1884 Salon of Paris, it was acclaimed by both the public and the press. But this success did not satisfy Marie Bashkirtseff at all, who was outraged that she did not receive a medal.

She wrote in her Journal:

"I am exceedingly indignant [...] because, after all, works that are really rather poor have received prizes"

and also

"There is nothing more to be done. I am a worthless creature, humiliated, finished".

Confident of her own talent, she denounces what seemed to her to be an injustice, but also expresses a fear: the fear of being forgotten. Marie was then only twenty-five years old, and knew already that she was condemned to die from tuberculosis; she died on 31 October that same year.

Edouard Vuillard | Young woman at the wind, 1899

Édouard Vuillard, in full Jean-Édouard Vuillard, (born November 11, 1868, Cuiseaux, France - died June 21, 1940, La Baule), French painter, printmaker, and decorator who was a member of the Nabis group of painters in the 1890s.

He is particularly known for his depictions of intimate interior scenes.

Vuillard studied art from 1886-1888 at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

In 1889 he joined a group of art students that included Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Sérusier, Ker-Xavier Roussel, and Félix Vallotton.

They called themselves the Nabis (Hebrew for “Prophets”), and they drew their inspiration from the Synthetist paintings of Paul Gauguin’s Pont-Aven period.

Aime-Nicolas Morot | Le bon Samaritain, 1880

Author: Aimé-Nicolas Morot (French painter, 1850-1913);

Title: The Good Samaritan;

Medium: oil on canvas;

Dimensions: Height: 268.5 cm - Width: 198 cm;

Current location: Musée du Petit Palais, Paris.

Born into a modest, actively Republican family, Aimé Morot pursued an exemplary career after receiving an academic training in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel.

Winner of the Prix de Rome in 1873, he used his stay at the Medici Villa as an opportunity to explore the Roman countryside on horseback.

Edgar Degas | Conversation, 1882-1885

During the mid-1880s, Degas repeatedly explored the motif of two or three women leaning on a wooden railing - at the racetrack, on a pleasure boat, or before a landscape - absorbed in casual conversation..

"Degas was clearly intrigued by the visual possibilities of this moment of female intimacy", Jill DeVonyar and Richard Kendall have written, "making half a dozen variants of the composition with a range of outfits, headgear, and backgrounds" (op. cit., 2007, p. 66).

Renoir | Port de Marseille, le Fort Saint-Jean, 1906

In the early 1880s Pierre-Auguste Renoir made his first forays abroad; he had previously traveled no further from Paris than Normandy. The years of 1881-1884 however saw Renoir in a variety of disparate locations including Algeria, Italy and the French Riviera.

It was on these journeys that he stepped away from rendering purely figure-based compositions, rather creating an interesting series of landscapes to record his new surroundings.

There is no doubt that these travels deeply affected Renoir and his art, and indeed he would return repeatedly to the South of France, eventually choosing to settle permanently in Cagnes-sur-Mer in the early 1900s.

Caravaggio | The Lute Player / Suonatore di Liuto, 1595-1596

The Lute Player is an early work by Caravaggio, who sought above all to convey the reality and solidity of the surrounding world. We can already see the elements of the artist's style which were to have such a widespread influence on other artists.

The figure of a young boy dressed in a white shirt stands out clearly against the dark background.

The sharp sidelighting and the falling shadows give the objects an almost tangible volume and weight.

Caravaggio was interested in the uniqueness of the surrounding world, and there are markedly individual features not only in the youth's face but also in the objects which make up the still life: the damaged pear, the crack in the lute, the crumpled pages of the music.

The melody written on those pages is that of a then fashionable song by Jacques Arcadelt, "You know that I love you".

Caravaggio | The Lute Player | The Hermitage version, 1595-1596